Saturday, 17 April 2010

LL will set you free.

When I first came into SL 3 years ago, no-one knew for certain that SL would still be around at the end of the year, let alone in 3 years time. There were, more or less, no other grids to go to except WoW, and people bought stuff in the same way that people build houses on the slopes of volcanos.......i.e. you have to be prepared for the day when you drop everything and run, fast.

Now, I seem to have read several times the sentence..."..non-transferable inventory...." in the context that those who have invested in such assets have the most to lose in jumping ship to another grid....Owning, having an invent full of stuff, is surely not the primary reason for being in SL, anymore than it is the reason for FL existence.....and...as the various bloggists keep pointing out, under the ToS you only rent a licence to use anyway.

That should be no surprise to anyone, we all knew that years ago, so why the big debate now...??

As I'm in the process of moving hovel in FL I am made very aware of how much FL crap is in my FL inventory and wiping the slate clean with a huge lava flow would not really damage me that much. The necessary creativity that would be called forth for a new life would be hugely beneficial in so many ways.

So....alts.... well, alts are a good example

[According to M Linden.. commenting on NWN.....

" Second Life is growing. We added more than 50K active users (defined as those who spend more time than one hour in-world in a month) December through March, and they are staying with us. Sure some are alts but the vast majority are new users. I've been greeting them in Welcome Island and its always easy to see who is an an alt and who isn't."

Hmmm...well... then maybe we could get some figures on the population if it is that easy....]

My point with alts is simply that, for the most part, our alts have very small inventories compared to our principle avatar (even if they are used as an external hard drive by our fear of inventory loss) but they have a life of their own and friends etc. that is less dependent on what they own, rather who they are.Life on alternative grids is similar to having an alt.OK, so it might be more buggy, less stable, like SL 3 years ago, but it is a joy to plant my first trees (see above) knowing that there is no tier accruing, no membership to pay, and the 2000 items in my invent are all textures.

OSGrid is like moving to the country, you lose a lot of attractions, and the shopping is crap, but you can always tp in to visit.....

So, it won't be long (the way things are going) before as many of us that have alts in SL will have Grid Alts, SSL, a second Second Life. The degree to which this happens is directly proportional, I think, to how well or badly, LL manages the Bean Counters. The Bean Counters are much less interested in how much talent migrates from SL than in how many new recruits it can plonk in dodgy housing slums using dodgy viewers. There is little point in getting annoyed or irate about their lack of consideration for the user, FL banks (for example) have been acting like that for years.

We will all become Transworlders apart from the consumerist noobs with deep pockets who prefer to shop than build. The Bean Counters won't mind that because it will make the bottom line look better when the Boys decide to sell up.

Watching this happen can be unsettling, but think of your TV (gathering dust in a corner) ..... a few years ago, in the 80's there were 4 TV channels in the UK, now...hmmm...not sure.....600 odd (mostly very odd).

It's called progress, and as freedom is now synonymous with freedom of choice...